Our Mission

I'm Louise Fletcher. As President of Blue Sky Resumes my mission is to help people take charge of their job search, build confidence and advance their careers. I founded Career Hub to further that mission by connecting job seekers with the best minds in career counseling, resume writing, personal branding and recruiting.

I'm Chandlee Bryan. As a career coach and resume writer with experience from Manhattan to Main Street, I help job seekers connect with opportunity by sharing news, trends and best practices. I'm the Managing Editor of Career Hub and run Best Fit Forward, a boutique career management firm.

Let’s say you are getting sued by your employer for breaking your non-compete. Know what to do next?

Let’s say you want to re-roof your residence? Know how to do that?

Let’s say you want to serve cake on your wedding day? Know how to bake it?

While many tasks are of a do-it-yourself (DIY) variety, for some, trying to write a first-class résumé is akin to shingling your own house, fixing your own tooth, representing yourself in court, repairing your own car, or baking your own wedding cake. Could you possibly do all of these things? Perhaps. Or perhaps it makes more sense in the long run to engage the services of someone who knows what they are doing – be it roofing, résumé writing or whipping up a wedding cake.

Here is a specific story to illustrate how one man’s résumé writing stress was transformed into résumé writing success – just like that. While I could share hundreds of similar stories, the following résumé writing story is one of my favorites. “Benjamin” owned a profitable business here in the Midwest. He decided after 25+ years of business ownership that he wanted to move to a warmer climate. As part of the job search process, he built a résumé from an online template. No problem. His daughter, a bright young college student majoring in English reviewed it, followed by a once-over by a few trusted colleagues. No problem.

He submitted his résumé via U.S. mail to the hiring manager. His qualifications, in his opinion, perfectly matched the employer’s requirements. When he did not hear back from the company, he followed up to see if the job was still open. It was. And to him, that was a problem. A Chamber contact referred him to me for “an opinion” on his résumé. We didn’t do a couple of minor changes – we did a total overhaul of his existing résumé document. He resubmitted the new résumé to the same hiring manager and the very day it was received, Benjamin got a phone call: “When can you be here to interview with us?” He did not mention the prior résumé submission, nor did the hiring manager bring it up. Bottom line, the newly created résumé opened the door just like that and ultimately, Benjamin got the job.

Can you do your own résumé? Sure. Absolutely. No question about it.

Can your DIY résumé generate results for you? I certainly hope so!

Perhaps, though, if your DIY résumé is not working for you, maybe you will do what Ben did. Ask around. Get a referral. Fix your résumé. Snag an interview. And get hired -- sometimes, just like that!

I love the conversations I have with clients. I love the questions they ask -- questions such as: “So, what are some good qualities of a job seeker?” If you had to create a job description for today’s job seeker, how would you write it? What would you include? Here are some thoughts – what do you think?

TITLE: Job Seeker

Position Type: Full Time, M-F -- frequent wknds.

Job ID/Tracking Code: URIT24-7

Job Requirements:

High sense of urgency, focused, goal-driven professional who is unstoppable in exploring opportunities that meet/exceed expectations.

Proficient in letting go of thoughts/things holding you back or keeping you stuck.

Ability to name that which keeps you awake at night and identify a coping mechanism to better manage it.

Remains calm under pressure and appears comfortable in responding to behavioral types of questions and/or random questions such as “If you were a horse, what kind would you be and why” and/or “If a computer forensic expert investigated your laptop, what is the worst thing she will uncover?”

Performs timely follow-up with employers and remains in contact throughout the duration of the interview cycle, inception to completion.

Must be confident, collaborative and affable in conversations with boards, hiring managers, human resources, recruiters, owners, key decision makers, stakeholders, partners and all other levels of personnel, entry to executive level.

Must be a quick, agile, analytical and decisive thinker in responding to a broad array of comments/questions from multiple individuals and sources.

Establishes a brand/brand message to optimize brand awareness and open new doors of opportunity.

Can readily grasp the concept of Applicant Tracking systems used in the hiring process.

Remains in a constant state of preparedness and readiness to discuss your personal brand and value proposition to maximize opportunities and offers.

Maintains job search equipment: mobile devices, landlines, computers, and tablets in pristine working condition. Will also employ the use of writing instruments, notepads, and personally branded business cards as needed.

Must possess professional attire suitable for multiple interviews with the same organization.

Will identify a work area in which to conduct job search activities, free of interruptions and distractions, to afford peak performance on a daily basis.

Must avoid smoking / drinking alcoholic beverages before and during an interview.

Well-versed and authentic in delivering a genuine response to FAQs such as “Tell Me About Yourself.”

Will track and record information/data regarding leads, ideas and networking connections.

Can work independently to achieve desired results and interact as a team member with networks, connections, and contacts.

High tolerance for submitting applications with limited or no response/feedback unless otherwise indicated while preserving a positive demeanor.

Self-directed, self-motivator with a clear sense of self and 100% commitment to the job search process.

Skilled in planning, organizing and executing a state-of-the-art job search campaign to generate opportunities of interest.

Strong work ethic in innovating, initiating and implementing a results-driven career management program which will add value to target organizations.

Getting ready to blast your résumé into the black hole of cyberspace? Wonder if your résumé will get noticed? Wonder if anyone, anyone will pay any attention to your story?

Here are five very specific questions to ask yourself before you send your résumé to anyone – whether it’s your Mama, your BFF, your lawyer or a prospective employer:

1. Will the reader know within one second your pertinent contact information?

Yes_____ No_____

2. Will the reader know within one second what you want to do occupationally?

Yes_____ No_____

3. Will the reader know within three seconds why you are a strong contender for the job?

Yes_____ No_____

4. Do you love your existing résumé?

Yes_____ No_____

5. Is your résumé visually appealing?

Yes_____ No_____

If you answered “yes” to the five questions stated above, you are good to go. However, if you cannot answer a definitive “yes” to these five basic questions, back to the drawing board for further revision of your résumé.

In short, make it easy for the hiring manager to connect with your presentation. The easier you make it for readers to grasp you and your story within seconds, the likelier it is you will achieve the results you desire.

Let’s say you are going through a nasty divorce and your lawyer (and/or soon-to-be ex) advise you that you need to “get a job” – a “real one.” Let’s say that you have been a stay-at-home Mom for 30 years, a wife for 30+ years and that your job has been to run the household while your husband “the big bread winner who always calls the shots” and “makes all the money” wants to get “this transition thing wrapped up as soon as possible.” (The words in quotes represent language clients have used to describe their particular situation). So, where do you begin the process of getting a job given that you have been the stay-at-home professional for three decades? Here are a few thoughts for you to consider:

Do not whip up a résumé first – do a résumé last, once you have undergone an assessment of your KSAs. Once you have determined your target job goals, then you are in a better position to build a customized résumé to showcase your story.

Know your KSAs before you go to market and promote yourself and your skillset. K stands for knowledge; S stands for skills and A stands for abilities. At any time during the process of looking for a job, someone, somewhere may ask you to describe your KSAs. Know them. Name them. Own them. Articulate them to the hiring manager. Be well prepared to discuss your credentials with your network, recruiter or hiring manager.

Get familiar with O*net Online – the coolest resource ever! Let’s say you have always thought about being a paralegal, though you have no clue what a paralegal does. Voilà – O*net Online to the rescue! Dwell there for a while. Get familiar with the language of your occupation of interest. To do otherwise is to do yourself a disservice.

Take a few career assessments. There are assessments that are “free” and assessments for a “fee.” Once you have taken a few, make notes of what you have learned and discovered.

Consider your confidence. If you say you have zero confidence, ask yourself what task might you do to enhance your confidence level? For starters, practice talking about yourself. If you have no human available to help you practice, practice on your own. Stand before a mirror and practice your lines. Learn your lines. Know your script. Fake it till you make it. Act the part. Do whatever it takes to get comfortable speaking about the product you. Do not interview in a state of ill-preparedness. Know your stuff!

Do not wilt and melt when rejection hits you in the face (or greets you in an email). Thank you for applying to our company; please know that you have not been selected to move forward in the process. Wishing you continued success.” Brands attract and brands repel; find someone who thinks your brand is awesome and is willing to pay a fair rate for it! Some employers will love you and others – not so much!

Do not tell yourself there are no jobs. Do not listen to people who tell you there are no jobs. Somebody, somewhere is getting hired and it might as well be YOU!

Do not speak negatively of yourself. Speak well of yourself; respect yourself and your brand. Use positive words to describe yourself. If you don’t, who will?

“If you can take it; you can make it.” Watching a movie trailer about Angelina Jolie’s new movie, I scribbled that line from the movie on a piece of paper. Translated, if you can take all the junk and debris that come with transition (of any variety), you will be fine – which according to The Italian Job, fine = freaked out, insecure, neurotic, and emotional! Just keep telling yourself that you are fine!

Do not be intimidated by anyone or everyone. Remember, the person who is interviewing you is a real person – a real human who has “stuff” going on in his or her life as well. Present the very best of you when you get a chance to shine. Do not speak about your personal situation; keep the conversation professional! Stand up for yourself. Be an advocate for yourself. If you don’t, who will?

Is this you? Do you find that the pressures of day-to-day work and home responsibilities keep you from doing what you need to do to get a good job fast in the future?

I think that would describe the vast majority of us. It's human nature to pay attention to what is front of us rather than what's down the road. It's also human to choose pleasures in the present (completing current projects) over pleasures down the road (getting a job fast when you want to leave your company or you get laid off).

This phenomenon is experienced by everyone who has ever tried to diet, eat more healthily, get in shape, buy less, save money for retirement, build job skills for the future, complete a degree etc.

I have no silver bullet to help us overcome this bias towards short term thinking and immediate rewards over long term planning and future benefits. What I do have is one way to approach working for rewards in the future that seems to help.

So let's shift our goal. We have to let go of expecting perfection in switching to long term thinking. A "good enough" outcome would be to make the changes you can and not to be discouraged if you don't make all the ones you know you should.

For example, let's list the "ideal" activities that will position you optimally to get your next job fast and the next one after that:

Regularly make comments or start discussions on the most active LI groups you belong to

Get started on Twitter and tweet valuable content

Automate your tweets to post to LI and Facebook to help with SEO (search engine optimization) when your name is Googled or searched for

Start a blog on Wordpress.com to exercise and establish your thought leadership and add one post a week

Expand your blog into a personal website

Connect with alumni events and online forums

Make connections with people in any group you are a member of: religious organization, sports organization, clubs, networking groups, professional associations etc.

For every person you meet, consider it your goal to give back: find out what matters to them and how you can help them with a referral or a piece of content that might be helpful

Regularly communicate up, down, and across your organization about what you've been working on to promote your personal brand with future networking contacts; do this with vendors and clients and other contacts as well

Have frequent coffees or lunches with contacts

Use a contact management system that will cue you when you're due to reach out to an important contact; reach out on a regular basis, even if only by email, asking them how they're doing and perhaps including a helpful content link

2. Grow your professional capabilites in the direction of future job markets, to the extent you can discern it

Get the new hot certifications in your space

Work towards in-demand new degree

Volunteer to work on projects at work that will expand your skill set and knowledge base

Keep on top of trends and what's going on in your field by following the best blogs and following thought leaders on Twitter

Make sure you know what your personal brand is and have incorporated it into all your marketing communications

It certainly would be awesome to do all these things for your career! Doing them would without a doubt help you get a better job faster when the time comes. But sometimes looking at lists like these can seem so daunting that you end up doing nothing at all.

So is there a middle ground? Something between perfection and stagnation? Only you can define where that space is. It would go along with the concept of "good enough." You've probably heard it. It's a phrase that allows us be imperfect but still good. Statements like, "I'm a good enough worker, father, runner, golfer, person etc." takes away the perfectionism that can be paralyzing.

Every week or so he goes onto his top social media sites and does one thing on each: an update on LI, a tweet on Twitter, a comment on Facebook, a comment in a LI group etc.

Every quarter he sends out an update with an offer to talk on the phone or help with referrals to the top people on his contact list

He takes a rainy Sunday afternoon soon to go to wordpress.com, set up a basic blog, and post his resume on one of the other pages

Then he picks up his personal website/blogsite project in a few weeks and adds another page, maybe a list of project highlights with quantified results

Once a month he reaches out to three people he remembers from college or from a certification course; maybe he calls a colleague that left the company awhile back, all with an eye to the idea of "givers gain"

Granted, these activities are not as broad-ranging and rich as the suggestions on the lists above. But they protect you from the despair that can happen when you fall short of perfectionistic expectations. And, doing some things, if not all of them, gives you the good feeling that you are moving ahead, not just staying in the present dreading the moment when the layoff is announced or when you get too fed-up to stay.

So start today in some small way to be a "good enough long term career planner," and give yourself credit and a reward! Food? Dinner out? Clothes? Night at a B&B? Good luck!

One great thing about holidays like Labor Day is the chance to get together with new folks as as well as old friends and family. I met a new person at a party this summer I'd like to tell you about.

A strong-looking woman in a khaki shirt buttoned up to the collar and khaki pants sat next to me at the picnic table. She was there with her husband and son. The food was great, and we chatted on about various things, including her family's involvement in the Boy Scouts of America. I enjoyed speaking with her. She was forthright, firm, and direct.

Later on at the beach party I happened to be talking to one of her relatives. He told me a story I'll never forget. He said this:

"You know Rose is a policewomen, right? (I didn't, but her no-nonsense demeanor made sense now.) Last week she responded to a 911 call and as she was approaching the house she smelled gasoline. Without hesitation she charged in and pulled out a woman and child. Within seconds the house was in flames and the abusive husband was dead."

That's what I call a personal brand story! Anyone who knows it would probably respond to a question like, "Who is Rose?" or "Would you recommend Rose?" by recounting this story. To learn more about personal branding click here.

Most of my technology executive clients don't have direct life-or-death stories, but their brand stories and the C-A-R (Challenge-Actions-Results) success stories that demonstrate their brand are often high-impact in their business environment. Examples include directing information security in a mission-critical financial services environment, managing the EMR (electronic medical records) and technology environment impacting patient outcomes in healthcare, or enabling a company to beat its competitors in terms of time to market with a new emerging technology product or service.

To show you how to write a less dramatic brand story, here's another example with the name and other details fictionalized but the story line true. This is what someone might say when asked, "What does Juan do?"

"Since Juan and I were at Georgia Tech together he's been involved in some cutting edge businesses. First he grew a startup VAR company to compete with the big players in Puerto Rico. Then, he saw the disruptive potential of cloud computing and SaaS in the mid-2000s, before most companies got onboard, and he launched a cloud services company. He was recruited away by X company (F50 well-known brand) to run their S. American sales. He left there to help Y company (early to market with cloud tech) jumpstart their S. American sales. It seems as though Juan is always there where change is happening in tech. Everything he touches turns to gold."

It's a longer and more complex brand story, but one that nevertheless gives the listener a sense of Juan. It has a beginning, middle, and (for now) end. We learn about his attributes, his passions, the universe he plays in, and his value proposition. It tells us he is most likely a fluent Spanish speaker and highly entrepreneurial. He's not afraid to assume and manage risk in fast-changing markets. And he's got a record of success and an ability to predict market trends and act on that insight.

Getting your brand story up on your LinkedIn profile and supporting it with success stories is one of the best marketing moves you can make. Infuse your resume with these brand/success stories as well. Because stories have been demonstrated to be many more times as memorable than simple facts, you are planting in your contacts' minds who you are professionally, your personal brand. Doing so will help you get the top job you want.

If you were building a new home, would you put the roof on before you dug the foundation? Would you put the windows in before you had the walls up? Would you install new carpet before the floor was finished? Would you?

I have always found it interesting that some job seekers want to write a résumé before they have carefully considered their next move. Here’s a recent conversation with a job seeker I met at a social outing and the conversation went something like this:

Job Seeker: Yeah, I’d like to pick your brain for a couple minutes….

So what are you thinking about doing for your next job?

Job seeker: I have no clue – I just need a résumé so I can get “out there.”

Are you familiar with your knowledge, skills and abilities and are you comfortable speaking about them?

Job Seeker: Um, well, I haven’t really thought about that.

Do you know how to confidently and efficiently speak about your brand?

Job Seeker: My what?

Have you considered the value you will deliver to an employer?

Job Seeker: Well, like what do you mean?

Can you cite your five best achievements in the last five years?

Job Seeker: Look, all I do is work and take classes – I don’t see why I have to think about all that before I look for a job – or write a résumé. What’s up with the 20 questions?

As a job seeker, I hope you will take some time to consider who you are, what you want, and where you want to go next. Here are some very basic questions to ask yourself as a means of getting started before you hit the streets (or write a résumé).

Who are you?

What do you want? What proof and evidence do you offer that you can do what you say you want?

When asked to describe your five best portable and transferable skills and your three to five top personality traits, what distinct words will you choose and what specific examples will you cite to back up your claims?

Where do you prefer to work, doing what, with whom and in what geographical area?

Why should an employer hire you?

How will you go about preparing for a job search and how will you measure progress?

How much money are you worth to an employer based upon research of at least three reliable sources?

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." - Abraham Lincoln

Remember how they offered the job to another candidate – the one that was a “better fit?”

Here is a little something you might try at home.

Thesaurus each respective word you choose to describe yourself. This can be done through research online or offline. For example, if you are insistent on using the word “loyal” to describe yourself, perhaps you will consider using another word that means something similar and said less frequently to hiring managers. Maybe, just maybe it will help you stand out in a sea of competition.

Another easy thing you can do to distinguish yourself with words is to visit to O*net Online. Once there, enter the “Keyword or O*NET-SOC Code,” filling-in-the-blanks as you wish. Once the occupational area of interest appears, scroll down to “Work Styles” to discover traits aligned with your target job. Also, spend some time reading about the KSAs of your job of interest.

Research. Learn. Discover. Expand the repertoire of words used to describe the amazing Brand You!

The thing I love about the career management business is that I have the opportunity to provide services to all ages spanning all generations. In my work with Baby Boomers, one of the frequently cited reasons for not finding a job is this: “I am too old – no one wants to hire me.” Here is a recent story about a Baby Boomer client who received corporate-sponsored outplacement services. We worked together for several sessions. Below is her success story – in her own words:

I did it – so can you!

Are you a Baby Boomer? Do you believe you are not hirable if you are past a certain age? Do you wonder how to even go about looking for a job? I did, too! It’s not as hard as you might think. A few easy steps and you, too, can have your ideal job!

1. Develop a list of what you enjoy, do well and would like to do in the future.

2. Ask yourself tough questions: What are you called to do? What is your mission in life?

And, when you get the job offer call, you will say (like the commercial): THAT WAS EASY!

So how long, might you wonder, did it take the above-referenced Baby Boomer to find a job in an intensely competitive job market? Less than 48 hours! Less than 2 days! Less than 2,880 minutes!

She applied online (based upon a referral) at approximately 8:00 P.M. on a Monday evening; had an interview at 4:00 P.M. the next day and by 4:15 P.M. the following day (Wednesday), received a job offer which she accepted upon negotiation of terms agreeable to both parties. My client is one happily employed Baby Boomer and her new employer can’t wait for her to start!

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” ~ Abraham Lincoln